An Astronaut's Salute to Neil Armstrong

I never thought I'd have to wrap my mind around a world, a planet, without Neil Armstrong. The commander of Apollo 11, and the first man to set foot on the moon, had stared death in the face so many times as a test pilot and astronaut that its rules seemed not to apply to him. Thus, his death Saturday at age 82 came as a shock to his astronaut colleagues and a world full of admirers.

For so much of my life, Neil was our living link with the moment when humanity first staked itself to a future beyond planet Earth. With his passing, we draw sadly more distant from the heroic age of space exploration, a time when America confidently reached out to grasp the heavens.

Of course, his place among the pantheon of great explorers is partly due to being at the right place at the right time. Hundreds of thousands of Apollo engineers, scientists, and managers had to execute four consecutive missions with near-perfect precision before Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins would get their shot at the moon. And after launch on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11's command module Columbia and lunar module Eagle had to work flawlessly to put the trio in position to pull off the first piloted landing on another celestial body.

When NASA's chief astronaut Deke Slayton assigned Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to Apollo 11, he had little reason to think fate would send this crew to the moon. But once the stars aligned, his choice for commander could not have been better. The superbly competent and confident Armstrong was among the best of the best: a courageous Navy aviator in the Korean War and a highly regarded test pilot for America's Cold War burst of innovation in supersonic jet aviation. By 1960 he was rocketing into near-space in the hypersonic X-15, and joined NASA's astronaut ranks in 1962. Just four years later, commanding Gemini 8, he and pilot Dave Scott wrestled the gyrating spacecraft back under control when a stuck thruster spun them to the edge of disaster. Executing an emergency splashdown into the Pacific, Armstrong was the very definition of test-pilot cool.

Armstrong and his Gemini colleagues' exploits on the harsh frontier of space captivated me. Not yet a teenager, I devoured every word about their backgrounds and daring missions. Their example set me on a path that I hoped one day would lead me to space.

As Armstrong and Aldrin undocked Eagle on July 20, I was parked with my vacationing family on the side of a California highway, glued to transistor-radio coverage of their descent. Pulse pounding, I listened as the pair fought their way through computer overloads, only to find their autopilot was aiming them at touchdown into a boulder-filled crater. Armstrong coolly took manual control, dancing past the hazard on a fiery pillar of rocket thrust, and landed on the moon with less than 30 seconds of fuel left in Eagle's tanks.

Neil then uttered the first words ever spoken from another world: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." He and Aldrin were the first humans on the moon, with command-module pilot Collins orbiting overhead, sharing equally in the triumph.

With the landing, moon walk, and safe return to Earth, Armstrong's special character became even more evident. For a pilot and commander who'd earned every ounce of adulation that came his way, he was entirely without pretension. Completely comfortable in his own skin, Armstrong avoided the public spotlight over the years, refusing to acquiesce to the celebrity fate had thrust upon him.

During my astronaut career, Armstrong's combination of skill and modesty was the model we all sought to emulate. It was my privilege, years after my own shuttle flights, to work with Neil in a professional setting. Nearly 40 years after Apollo 11, he hadn't lost his incisive yet modest manner. You can imagine the secret thrill it was to talk easily with him about the nuts and bolts of aeronautical technology, our future in human spaceflight, and his assessment of our current space-exploration policy.

With his untimely passing, I've lost a boyhood hero and treasured professional exemplar. America has lost the most brilliant figure of its confident age of exploration. We left the moon in 1972, hesitant since to follow in Armstrong's historic footsteps. If we ever mean to surpass Apollo's epic achievements and regain our future as explorers, we'll need the serious leadership and quiet determination exemplified by Neil Armstrong.

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